


God, I Pity the Violins

by StarSpray



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020), The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Crossover, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Maglor (Tolkien) Through History, Post-Canon, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-03-05
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:41:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,540
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28415550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StarSpray/pseuds/StarSpray
Summary: On a walk down the beach in the early hours of the morning, Maglor stumbles upon a body. And then the body comes back to life.
Relationships: Maglor & Quynh
Comments: 38
Kudos: 76





	1. Chapter 1

_But the most special are the most lonely_  
 _God, I pity the violins_  
 _In glass coffins they keep coughing_  
 _They've forgotten, forgotten how to sing_  
\- Regina Spektor, "All the Rowboats"

**.**

Maglor thought at first the dark mass just washed up with the waves was seaweed. But as he drew closer he realized that it was hair—and that hair was attached to a body. He halted, ankle deep in foam, too surprised for a second to do anything but stare. But the moment passed, and he hurried forward to kneel beside the body. It—she, in fact—was emaciated, practically skeletal, naked, and, when he put his fingers to her throat to seek a pulse, cool to the touch. Her eyes were open and staring, but empty. There was no heartbeat. He sighed—but before he could draw his hand away the heart _began to beat again_ beneath his fingertips, and the woman's body jerked, convulsed, and then she started retching up copious amounts of seawater, expelling it from her lungs and also her stomach. Maglor jerked his hand back, lost his balance, and sat down hard in the wet sand. As the woman emptied herself of water he glanced out toward the sea. He had not really expected to see anything, but where the water would have been waist-deep for him he saw the figure of a woman, with sea foam falling around her like pale hair. He scrambled to his feet as the woman advanced, growing out of the water so that she was tall enough to look him in the eye, her own eyes like bright points of light in the flowing water of her body.

"What is the meaning of this, lady?" Maglor asked, gesturing at the woman, who lay still on the beach, but for the strangely steady rise and fall of her chest.

"I do not know," said Lady Uinen. Her expression was difficult to see amid the water, but her voice was clear, and it was troubled. "I do not know the deeps of Middle-earth's waters as well as I did long ago. So much has changed. She has been trapped in an iron casket at the bottom of the sea, drowning and waking, drowning and waking—I do not know what to make of it."

"But—that is impossible, even for one of the Eldar," said Maglor. "And this is a mortal woman—or she should be." For a moment he thought of Sauron, who might have had such a power—but he had fallen so long ago, never to rise again, or so said the Wise. But the Wise had been wrong before…

"That is not my domain, son of Fëanor," said Lady Uinen. "Yet I do not sense any evil sorcery at work. Perhaps Manwë or Mandos know more, but this is a verse in the Music beyond my understanding."

"So you've brought her to me?" Maglor asked.

It seemed to him that Uinen smiled. "Yes." And with that she stepped back and melted into the waves, washing out into the ocean with the tide. As she did Maglor heard her voice echoing up out of the water, singing an ancient song in a language older than time, almost indistinguishable from the music of the sea itself.

Maglor turned back to the woman, who had started to shiver, though she remained unconscious. He sighed, and knelt to pick her up. She weighed no more than a child. His cottage wasn't far, just up a steep hill that overlooked a lonely stretch of beach on the east, and down the other side to a small hamlet on the other, a cluster of quaint houses and little shops, and a post office. It was the sort of place you'd expect to find Miss Marple, although as long as Maglor had lived there, there had been no real crime, and certainly no murders. He was known in the village as a bit of an eccentric recluse, so he was left alone, but treated kindly whenever he had to go into town. He was not quite certain, however, what this small English village would make of a strange woman washed up nearly dead on the shore. Hopefully no one would have to find out.

Safely inside, Maglor took the woman first to the bathroom, where he rinsed the sand and salt off of both of them. Her hair was long and dark and unfortunately tangled into an impossible clump—and falling out anyway, by the handful—so he found a pair of scissors and cut it away. The woman had begun to stir as soon he placed her in the tub, so Maglor hummed lullabies as he washed her, putting power into his voice that he had not used in a very, very long time. The last thing she wanted, probably, was to wake up in the water again. At least this water was warm.

Sufficiently cleaned, Maglor found one of his softest nightshirts for the woman, and bundled her into his bed. She did not stir again, and he left her to get some proper rest while he tried to decide what to next. It was still early in the morning; outside of his kitchen window a robin alighted on a bush that badly needed trimming and sang a few cheerful notes. Maglor whistled back at it, and for a while they were both entertained. When the robin flew away, Maglor turned from the window to take stock of his cupboards and refrigerator. He found that he had the basics needed for chicken soup, by pure chance—he'd gotten a small chicken at the village shop the day before with a vague idea of roasting it. Instead he brought out a pot and set it to boil with some herbs and vegetables, while he tidied up the rest of the small house. He was not usually a messy person, but he did not often have guests and as a result clutter and dust tended to build up without him realizing.

As he gathered up notebooks and scraps of paper off of the floor in the parlor, his thoughts kept circling back to what Uinen had said of the strange woman. Not that she seemed unable to die—but that she had been trapped at the bottom of the sea in an iron casket. It sounded familiar, though he couldn't think of where he had heard of such a thing before. Who would do something like that, and why? Maglor sat back on his heels and sighed, looking up and out of the window. A few stray tendrils of ivy were starting to creep over the glass. His garden needed tidying even more badly than his house.

That thought reminded him that he had a patch of athelas growing somewhere out there, no doubt going as wild as the ivy and the honeysuckle. He set the pile of notebooks on the sofa by the window, caught the other papers that tried to slide off as a result, and then made his way back to the kitchen to put a kettle on. On his way outside he stopped to peer in at the woman. She hadn't moved; somehow her color had improved, and she looked a little less like she would perish at any moment. But he did not even have to try that hard to sense that her mind was deeply troubled and her spirit wounded.

The athelas was indeed thriving, its long leaves waving gently in the breeze coming off of the sea. A few rabbits scampered out of Maglor's way, vanishing beneath it, as he approached. He picked a few leaves and paused a moment to crush one in his hand to inhale the scent. He closed his eyes and breathed deep, smelling sweet grass and fresh wind off of snowy mountains—the smell of the wide plains of Lothlann and Ard-galen, in those glorious days of long ago when the Siege of Angband had held.

Maglor opened his eyes, feeling steadier, and looked out over the ocean. Clouds were gathering; the sky and the sea were both slate-grey, the latter flecked with the white tips of choppy waves. He saw a few fishing boats out in the distance, and did not envy the fishermen such a day. It was likely to rain before long, and the breeze kept changing, unsure of which direction it wanted to blow. He picked a few more leaves and retreated inside. The house smelled like chicken and rosemary, itself a comforting scent. The kettle was also boiling, so Maglor took a bowl of the water to the bedroom, where the woman still lay deeply asleep, caught in a torrent of dreams. He set the bowl down beside the bed, bruised a few athelas leaves, and dropped them into the steaming water. The scent that arose was not unlike what he had smelled out in the garden—open plains and clean air.

Sitting down beside the bed, Maglor regarded the woman. Her breathing had evened out a little more, and the pinched expression was gone from her face. He reached out his thought to touch hers, hoping to learn at the very least what her name was, and what language she spoke. He was not prepared for the flood of memory that spilled over—hundreds and hundreds of years' worth, of battles and death and life and joy and sorrow and rage. Her name was Quynh, and she had been born in what was now Vietnam. As for language—what languages she did not speak would be a shorter list, although no dialect was newer than what had been spoken in the sixteenth century. Her strange inability to die had begun far away from the Atlantic Ocean, and had spanned far more years than Maglor had been prepared to guess. And through it all there were three others, immortal as she was, who appeared again and again. Two men, always together—and another woman, with pale skin and dark hair and a wicked grin. Her name more than any other thought passed through Quynh's mind, and thus through Maglor's. _Andromache_.

And all of the pain and fear of six hundred years of drowning over and over and over again had been distilled into anguished rage that colored everything else. Maglor withdrew from Quynh's mind feeling as though he were drowning himself. And all this was while she was under the calming and healing influence of athelas.

He left her to sleep and went to check the soup. As he chopped carrots and celery he caught himself wondering what sorts of weapons he had in the house, and whether he should hide his kitchen knives. But that was ridiculous. A warrior like Quynh could turn anything into a weapon—she herself was a weapon, if it came to it.

She woke with a start when he brought a mug of broth into her sometime later. It was the middle of the afternoon by then, and the rain had arrived, pattering on the windows and pooling on the garden paths. Her hand shot out and gripped Maglor's arm with surprising strength, enough to leave bruises before he could move back. Her voice was barely audible, a painful rasp from a throat that had done nothing but gargle seawater for centuries, but she croaked questions and curses as she struggled to rise out of the blankets.

"It's all right," Maglor said, as he caught her and pressed her back onto the pillows. "It's all right, Quynh. You're safe. I won't hurt you." She collapsed back when her strength ran out, panting, and he crushed another athelas leaf into the still-warm bowl of water. As the scent filled the room he began to sing, and after fighting it for several minutes, Quynh's eyes drifted closed, and she sank back into deep sleep. Only then did he leave to fetch an instrument, grabbing the first one he found in his music room. It took a bit of fiddling to match the songs he wanted to play to the strings of a guitar, but he managed it, seating himself on the floor as he strummed. The songs were for rest, and for healing of both body and mind; he had learned them long ago in his Tree-lit youth in the Gardens of Lórien, and when he closed his eyes he could see the red poppies swaying in the breeze, and the golden light of Laurelin glittering on the streams and ponds, and making the golden flowers of the malinornë trees glow. Whether the power in the songs was enough to help Quynh, he could not say. Time would tell.

By the time darkness fell Maglor was exhausted; it had been years beyond count since he had put forth that much power into his music; it was like flexing a muscle that had been left to atrophy. He left Quynh to sleep—hopefully a deep, restful sleep that would last at least through the night—and retreated to the kitchen. He ate some soup and put the rest away, and then made himself some tea and went to his study. Out of idle curiosity, because the name was faintly familiar, he opened up the Internet and searched for Andromache, and then the names Andromache and Quynh together. He found no useful results. Then he abandoned their names and searched for the story of a witch tossed into the sea in an iron coffin, and he _did_ find that, though it was a small part of a larger article about the witch trials and the burning of heretics in England, and was noted as apocryphal: many attempts had been made to kill a pair of witches who simply would not die; in an attempt to lessen their combined power one had been locked in an iron maiden and cast into the sea. The fate of the other was unknown. The author of the paper seemed to believe the story was not true, and there were no official records surviving that so much as hinted at it. Well, of course there wouldn't be. Maglor himself had often quietly erased small bits of recorded history in which he played a part that might draw undue attention.

Curiosity satisfied, he turned on the radio and flopped onto the sofa by the window. The quiet strains of Mozart mingled with the steady patter of raindrops on the glass, combining into a soothing lullaby that had him drifting off to sleep.

He woke in the morning to bright sunshine, the rain having passed on during the night. The robin was back, perched in a tree just visible through the window from where Maglor lay on the sofa. He yawned, stretched, and rolled over, half-tempted to go right back to sleep.

The sight of Quynh across the room watching him the way a cat watched potential prey eliminated any desire or ability to return to sleep. Maglor jerked and fell off the sofa, hitting the floor with a thud and a curse. He picked himself up, only to find himself frozen in place with the blade of one of his kitchen knives at his throat. Perhaps he should have hidden them after all. "I have some questions for you," Quynh said into his ear, "and you are going to answer them all truthfully."

"You don't need to threaten me just to ask questions," said Maglor, carefully.

Quynh ignored this. At least her hand holding the knife was steady. "What is this place?" she asked. "Who are you, and why did you bring me here?"

"This place is my house," Maglor said. "I brought you here because I did not want to leave you lying alone out on the beach in the rain."

" _Why?_ " she repeated, pressing the knife harder against his neck. He felt it break the skin, just slightly.

"Because I wanted to help you," Maglor said, and then he moved, bringing his arm up quicker than Quynh could have anticipated and knocking the knife away. It clattered onto the wood floor as he turned. Quynh was reacting by this time and for a brief moment they struggled against one another—but even if Quynh were at her full strength, Maglor was stronger yet, and faster. He pinned Quynh's arms to her sides and held on as she struggled. Only when she stopped, panting, did he let her go. She lunged for the knife, but he was still faster, and snatched it up. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, as she stood in the middle of the room, out of breath and with her hastily-cut hair sticking up at odd angles. "My name is Max," he went on after a moment. It was the name he had been using for most of the twentieth century, mixing and matching various surnames, depending on where he was and how long he intended to stay there. He had been Max Smithson for the last forty, living in this little out-of-the-way cottage outside a little out-of-the-way village. After another short pause he remembered himself and asked, "What is your name?"

She glared at him, hands opening and closing into fists. It was a little absurd, Maglor thought, as he stood poised to move or block whatever she might try to do. From the outside, he thought, it was an absurd situation. In a fight Maglor was stronger and faster, but Quynh had more recent experience (which was remarkable in itself given how long she had been at the bottom of the ocean), and she could fight like she had nothing to fear—because she would always be able to get back up, while he may not.

It almost seemed like she _wanted_ a fight. "Please," Maglor said, holding up his free hand, palm out, "I am no jailer. If you want to leave you can. The door is just down the hall. Though someone will likely call the authorities if you go out dressed as you are." This seemed to startle Quynh out of whatever rage she was in, and she looked down at herself, barefoot and clad in a too-big nightshirt. "I made soup yesterday. Did you find the bowl I left for you?" Quynh looked up again, her expression wary but her stance relaxing a little, and she nodded. "There's more in the kitchen. Or I can fix up something else. I meant to bake some more bread today, but if you stab me while I'm kneading the dough I'm afraid it will ruin the taste." This startled her into laughter—a short bark of it, but enough to break the remaining tension. Maglor released a small sigh of relief.

"Quynh," she said, at last. "My name is Quynh."

"A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Quynh," said Maglor. "I'm going to make some breakfast."

As it turned out, Maglor had forgotten to pick up eggs when last at the shop, so he dug out some oatmeal, and put on the kettle for tea. While he cut bread for toast he pretended not to notice Quynh examining everything in his kitchen, even as he watched her out of the corner of his eye. She did not stop moving around the room until he placed a bowl of oatmeal on the table for her, alongside the cartons of blueberries and raspberries, and the cream. "Where is this place?" she asked, as he set his own bowl down.

"Southern England. A bit south and west of Dover," Maglor said. "Just far enough to be too out-of-the-way for tourists to stop in very often."

Quynh ate as though—well, as though she hadn't had a proper meal in five hundred years. Maglor got her seconds, and while he was fixing another pot of tea he quietly poured the extra boiling water over another few athelas leaves, so their fresh clear fragrance filled the kitchen. At the very least they settled his own nerves.

"You haven't asked me where I came from," Quynh said, as she watched him return to the table. She reminded him again of a cat, though at the moment she was not hunting.

"Would you answer me if I did?" he replied. She frowned at him, and did not answer. "Is there somewhere you wish to go? Or someone I can help you find?" She hesitated, but shook her head. "Well, if there is you only need to ask."

She fell silent, and remained so as she watched him clean up the breakfast dishes, and then as she followed him back to the bedroom, where he dug through a chest of clothes looking for something that might even come close to fitting her. He didn't find anything, of course; Quynh was barely half his size. Just some old clothes he thought that, with enough time, he could take apart and fashion into a couple of dresses or skirts. But that would take time, particularly since he'd lost his old sewing machine at some point in the last decade and had not bothered to replace it.

Finally, Maglor sat back on his heels and looked at Quynh, who was perched on the bed. "I'm afraid I don't have any proper clothing for you," he said. "I can take a guess at your size and pick up a few things from the shop in town, and after that you can go try things on yourself."

Quynh tilted her head. "Are there not tailors and seamstresses?"

"Most clothes are mass-produced, and most people just make do with the best fit they can find," Maglor said.

"What do you do?" Quynh asked.

"I make my own clothes, mostly," said Maglor. It was almost entirely out of millennia of habit, but also, "I'm so tall, it's very difficult to find anything off the rack." He closed the chest and got to his feet. "Will you be all right alone while I walk down to the shop?"

"Of course," she said sharply. No doubt she would search the whole house thoroughly. Maglor tried to think if he had anything he didn't want her to discover, but nothing sprang to mind. It was absurd, the two of them standing there trying to keep nearly the same secret from the other, and he trying not to let on that he already knew Quynh's. But he couldn't laugh about it until he was out of the house, walking down the lane toward the village.

As he stepped out of the gate the sound of excited barking erupted in the bushes just across the way. A moment later a small splotchy brown and white dog leaped out of the grass to jump up to plant muddy paws on Maglor's knees. "Good morning, Norindo," he said, crouching to scratch the dog behind the ears. "I hope you weren't out in the rain all night." Norindo was a stray who, while very friendly and seemingly fond of Maglor, refused to come inside. His fur was damp and becoming matted, and one of these days Maglor was going to have to make a real concerted effort to get Norindo properly groomed—and to the vet, while he was at it.

But that would have to wait. Maglor rose again, and Norindo raced around his feet as he walked the rest of the way to the village. It was still fairly early, and it was quiet in the little second-hand clothing shop. "Good morning," said the young woman at the till. "Let me know if you need help finding anything."

"Thanks," said Maglor, as he scanned the signs hanging over the different sections. The woman's section was the largest, to his relief, and he picked out a variety of styles, since he had absolutely know idea what Quynh might like, and probably Quynh didn't either, since her ideas of fashion were at least five hundred years out of date. He felt only a little awkward approaching the till, but the young woman didn't comment on anything but the weather.

He ran a few other errands, while he was there, since when he had last gotten groceries he had been getting them for only one person. Norindo romped about his feet between shops, and made friends with a lab outside of the post office. Once they returned home, though, he disappeared into the garden in spite of Maglor attempting to coax him inside with treats. The dog knew that way led to a bath, Maglor was sure of it. He sighed and gave up for the time being.

His house looked almost exactly the same as it had when he'd left, except that it had the feeling of things being just slightly off. Quynh had been very careful in her rummaging, it seemed. He found her in the music room, perched on the piano bench and frowning at the music on the stand. "Here are some clothes," he said, holding out the bag. She took it and peered inside, both wary and skeptical. "Do you play?" he asked, nodding to the piano. Mostly it was just for something to say.

Quynh shook her head. "Do you…play _all_ of these?" she asked, glancing around at the various instruments around the room.

"Yes. I'm a musician by trade."

Quynh disappeared into the bedroom to try on the clothes, and Maglor made a quick circuit around his house to make sure that nothing important, or sharp, had gone missing. Nothing had, so he went outside into the garden, where Norindo had stopped his running about and was flopped onto a patch of grass in the bright sunshine. He lifted his head and thumped his tail when he saw Maglor, but did not get up. Maglor put his hands on his hips and surveyed the garden. He wasn't really sure why Quynh's arrival made him want to put it in order, but he wasn't going to fight the urge while it lasted. The only problem was knowing where to start.

By the time Quynh reemerged from the house, clad in a skirt and blouse and a pair of sandals, Maglor was well into clearing out the herb beds of weeds. Norindo jumped up and went to sniff at her feet and then to lick her hand, which seemed to startle her out of whatever thoughts had been circling in her mind. She sat down on the grass and scratched him behind the ears.

The next few days passed in relative peace. Quynh was finding her feet, gradually, and while she learned how to use things like the television and refrigerator (and, memorably, the toaster), Maglor cleared out the garden, section by section. Nights were more difficult. Quynh would not have slept at all if Maglor had not gotten out his harp every evening to play the lullabies out of Lórien, and more often than not she woke screaming or cursing in the middle of the night. Or Maglor would peer into the room to check on her and find her curled up on the side of the bed by the window, staring out at the ocean.

Four days into the arrangement, Maglor drove them both into Dover to find a proper department store so Quynh could have a say in her own wardrobe. She spent the drive clutching the door handle with white knuckles and gritted teeth, and the rest of it trying to pretend that she wasn't completely out of her depth—so it wasn't as pleasant an outing as Maglor might have hoped, but at least they got clothing that she liked and that fit, and no one ended up punched or stabbed or flung out of the car. And he was able to introduce her to ice cream, which seemed to more or less make up for all the stressful parts.

Norindo wandered in and out of the garden all the while, napping in the sunshine while Maglor tackled a new patch of weeds, or sniffing about the fence posts while he reorganized the herbs or plotted out how to arrange a bed of snapdragons and gardenias. They seemed to be settling into a more or less peaceful routine, and so Maglor made the mistake of letting his guard down—and so he didn't turn around when he heard Quynh come outside, and then go back in, only to come back out again a moment later. He _did_ feel a prickle on the back of his neck, however, and when he turned it was to see Quynh with a knife in her hand. Maglor moved just in time to avoid a blade in his neck or chest—it was the _same_ knife she'd used before, even—and instead received only a gash across his upper arm, the pain like a line of fire over his skin. Quynh seemed to pause as the blood welled up, but Maglor was not about to let her try anything else, so he lunged—and she reacted, moving more quickly than she had the first night he'd had to wrestle a blade from her, and certainly more quickly than he had expected.

"What are you _doing?_ " Maglor demanded once he had her on the ground, holding her wrists over her head with one hand while she squirmed beneath him, trying in vain to pry her fingers off the knife handle. Her knee collided with his groin and he folded, rolling off of her. She sat up, and instead of attacking him with the knife again she grabbed his sleeve and hanked it up to reveal the wound there, which still bled freely.

"I don't understand," she said, frowning.

"When you cut someone," Maglor gasped, once he could breath again, "they tend to bleed."

"It isn't closed." She prodded at it, and Maglor slapped her hand away.

"Of course not!" He sat up, twisting his arm and craning his neck to get a look at it. "It's going to need stitches."

Quynh sat back on her heels, still frowning. She did not react when Maglor snatched up the knife, getting stiffly to his feet; he left her there in the garden and headed inside to the bathroom.

Under closer inspection the wound was not as bad as he had first thought. It hurt, and hurt worse when he washed it out, but in the end he decided the hassle of stitches wasn't worth it. He taped it shut instead and slapped a large band-aid over it. Emerging from the bathroom he found Quynh in the kitchen, drying her hands on a towel—having washed his blood off of them, presumably. "I don't suppose you'd care to explain what that was all about," he said, when she looked up at him. Her gaze was clear and she seemed lucid enough. "I thought we were past the attempted-murder stage of our acquaintance."

"I wasn't trying to murder you," she said.

"What do you call it, then, coming up behind someone to stab them?"

"I thought you would heal," she said.

Maglor stared at her, and then tried to think of how and when she had realized he was older than he claimed. It was almost a relief, to have their mutual secrets start to unravel. "You mean, like you?" he asked. Her gaze grew sharp and she took a step back, settling into a familiar stance. "You were dead on the beach when I found you," Maglor told her. He went to the cupboard for a glass. "And if I were going to do something about it I would have done it by now. But there must be a better way to discover if someone is like you than by _stabbing_ them."

"I didn't _stab_ you," Quynh muttered, slinking away like a disgruntled cat as Maglor made his way to the sink.

"Only because I moved. And before you decide to repeat the experiment I will tell you now that if killed I will not pop back up again like a jack-in-the-box." He filled the glass with water and drank, wishing he had something stronger in the house.

"Then how can you speak languages that died with their people when the Teutonic Knights turned their attention north of the Holy Land?" Quynh asked, in one such dialect. It was somewhat different than the version Maglor knew, because he had been long gone from the Baltic regions of Europe by the time would-be crusaders had begun to seriously encroach upon it. He hadn't even thought of those people, or the language, in centuries…but there were so many songs and tongues jostling around in his head that perhaps he had been singing one of their songs outside in the garden without realizing. Maglor refilled his glass in order to delay replying—although his reluctance to react was probably confirmation in itself.

Finally, in the same tongue, he said, "Speaking a dead tongue is still no reason to stab someone. You could have just asked." He turned around, sipping his water, and leaned against the counter top. They regarded each other with new wariness. Outside in the distance a dog barked—perhaps Norindo, chasing seagulls on the beach. Finally, Maglor returned to English and said, with a sigh, "I am very old, Quynh. Older than you would believe if I told you."

"You _are_ immortal, then."

"You might say so," Maglor said. "But not as you are."

She regarded him for a moment, and then said, "Why did we never dream of you? Did you dream of us?"

"Why would I dream of you?" Maglor asked. "Or you of me?"

"We all dream of each other, before we meet. Nicolò always said it was destiny."

"As I said, I am not like you," Maglor said after a moment. "You are a mortal who refuses to die, for reasons I cannot begin to understand. I did not become the way I am. It is merely my nature, in the same way it is Norindo's nature to run about on four legs. As for destiny—your friend Nicolò may have been on to something. It is no coincidence that it was my beach that you washed up on, I think." He finished his water and set the glass down. "Since both of us now know the other's secrets, more or less, how about you promise not to try to kill me again, and I will help you start properly learning how to live in the twenty-first century?"

Quynh's grin was sudden and bright. "Deal."


	2. Chapter 2

It was clear that Quynh had expected to find it easy to adapt to whatever changes the world had undergone in her absence—it was what she had been doing for centuries. But it was one thing to accept and adapt to the changes as they came, and quite another to wake up in a world utterly changed from the one you knew. So Maglor's lessons kept getting cut short when she lost her temper and stormed out of the room. Reading in particular was a large stumbling block. Quynh was not entirely illiterate, but she was not prepared for just how heavily the world now relied upon the written word. By contrast, things like plumbing and practical use of electric appliances came easily, and often with a great deal of delight. And alarmingly but not altogether surprisingly, she was very interested in the advancement of weapons technology. Maglor was distinctly lacking in that area of knowledge, and he had no real interest in fixing it.

"And what happens if you need to defend yourself, or your village?" Quynh demanded when he told her this.

"Defend the village from what?" Maglor asked. "There are hardly bands of marauders going around pillaging, these days." He paused. "Well, not in England, anyway."

"And yourself?" Quynh demanded.

"I defended myself against you rather well, and weaponless. But I am not a soldier or a warrior, I am a musician. I tossed my sword into the sea eons ago."

Quynh didn't flinch, but her eyes darkened. "That was a stupid thing to do." Maglor just shrugged, and distracted her from the subject by pulling up a world map, so she could be outraged at the geopolitical state of the world instead of at his lack of a fully-stocked armory.

The next day it rained, dark clouds rolling in off of the choppy sea. Maglor squinted out of the window and wondered if it was his imagination, or if some of the larger waves out at sea had arms and shoulders, and if the thunder sounded just a little like laughter. He hoped Norindo had found adequate shelter; the little dog had not come around that morning. Quynh kept away from the windows and huddled on the sofa beneath several afghans, with a mug of hot chocolate—at the moment her most favorite thing about the modern era—close at hand. Maglor went to boil water for athelas. "You keep boiling those leaves," Quynh remarked when he returned with a bowl into the parlor. "What are they?"

"Kingsfoil," Maglor said. "It is useful for calming the mind and spirit." As he spoke he set the bowl down near the mug of hot chocolate, so that its clear, clean scent could permeate the room. "Music helps also, I have found. Do you mind if I play?" Quynh might have nodded; it was hard to tell beneath the blankets.

He brought his driftwood harp into the parlor and set up by the window, where the rain lashed against the glass. It was an uneven and wild rhythm but Maglor had mastered it long ago. He picked out the notes to a song out of Númenor, that he had heard in Gondor soon after its founding, when he had wandered into its ports, wondering at the storms that had wracked the coast and brought a small fleet of ragged ships hurtling out of the West. It was a song to Uinen, a plea for her protection and mercy against the whims and violent delights of her husband. Maglor had no thought that Uinen might hear him, let alone answer—she was likely gone away back into the depths that were her own delights, or perhaps back upon the Straight Road to the Shadowy Seas or the shining Bay of Eldamar. But it was a good song, and he was in the mood for old things, out of a world long lost and forgotten.

Once that song was ended, his fingers kept playing of their own accord, other songs that he had neither thought of nor played for years beyond counting, forgotten until his fingers found the notes on the harp strings, and the words fell from his tongue almost unbidden. They were songs from the Elder Days, when the world was quieter and greener and, somehow, both bigger and smaller at once. He had not been young, even then, but now he began to truly feel his age, older than the hill upon which his little cottage stood, and weary, and aching with homesickness.

A result of speaking with Uinen, no doubt. Delayed a bit as he had focused all of his thought and attention on Quynh, but now rising up with a vengeance. He wanted to go _home_ —but the mere thought reawakened other memories, and his left hand hurt as it had not hurt in many an Age. He flinched and his fingers fumbled on the harp strings, ending the music in a sudden discordant jumble of sound as he drew his hand back to his chest. He was vaguely aware of Quynh sitting up on the sofa and asking him something, but the roaring of the sea was suddenly in his ears, and the howling of the wind and the smell of smoke and sulfur and—

The warmth of steam on his face, and the smell of wind over the wide grasses of Lothlann cut through the memory. He inhaled deeply and blinked his eyes open, finding Quynh there with the bowl of water and athelas leaves held out in front of her. "What happened?" she asked, as Maglor took another breath. "Your hand…"

He looked down. The scars from the Silmaril had never really faded, in spite of his hand otherwise healing fully. Mostly they were just unsightly—but even then it was little effort to weave an enchantment of concealment about it, in addition to the other ways Maglor slipped through the world unnoticed. Now he shook his head as he rubbed at his palm with his other thumb. "It is an old injury," he said. The words came out shorter and sharper than he'd meant, but Quynh took no offense—but when she met his gaze her own dark eyes widened as she took several quick steps back. It seemed all of his usual cloaks had fallen away. Maglor looked away, catching sight of his own reflection, a ghostly image of the Eldar of ancient days, in the window panes, eyes burning with ancient Light. He closed his eyes and turned away.

Outside the rain lashed against him, and the wind whipped his clothes and his hair around him, almost howling in his ears. There was definitely laughter in it, a wild and joyful sound. Maglor walked to the top of the path leading down to the beach and stopped. The hill was not quite a cliff, but it was close. He stared down at the churning waters for a while, his mind whirling; he stood half in memory and half in the present, the smell of rain mixing with the smell of smoke, and the salt on this lips coming from both the sea and from blood. His fingernails dug into his palms, small pinpricks of pain that did little to ground him. He closed his eyes as the rain increased in intensity. Once upon a time he might have vented his frustration in trying to sing the storm away—but that way lay only exhaustion and madness, even if the storm was not directly conjured by Ossë.

Eventually the wind changed, and the rain began to lessen. The storm was moving away, down the coast and toward the open seas to the south. The tide was rolling out as well, leaving behind the beach below him strewn with flotsam and jetsam. He could see quite a bit of garbage, but also a fair amount of driftwood, which he collected out of long habit and the vague idea that he might make things out of it. Occasionally he did—one such sculpture had been a particular success, and bought him the cottage. Maglor wiped rain from his face and inhaled deeply the scents of wet soil and sand and salt. That did more to bring him back fully to the present than anything else, and he took a few more breaths before turning back to the house. He would go down to the beach after the rain ceased entirely.

Quynh was in the kitchen examining some of the cans he had in his pantry, and she gave him a rather unimpressed look when he came in, dripping all over the linoleum. "You're going to get sick," she said, "and I won't nurse you."

"I don't get sick," he said, as he started to make his way to the bathroom.

Quynh made a disbelieving noise. "You don't get sick and you don't grow old. Can you be killed at all?" she wanted to know, as she put the cans away.

" _Slain ye may be, and slain ye shall be: by weapon and by torment and by grief; and your houseless spirits shall come then to Mandos._ And so we were—most of us." And with that he escaped into the bathroom, where Quynh could not question him further, and turned the shower on to near-scalding temperatures. His palm throbbed once again as though the old hurt was awakened by the mere mention of the Doom, though it had long ago been put to rest.

The rain subsided by late afternoon, and as the tide went out Maglor grabbed a few trash bags and made his way down to the beach. Norindo appeared from somewhere, muddy and cheerful, to romp around his feet as he walked. Quynh followed behind, although she stayed far away from the water, back on the dunes. Maglor was surprised she even came down the hill, but the grim look on her face suggested that she did not like being afraid of anything, even something so worthy of it as the sea.

As storms usually did, this one had brought a great deal of flotsam and jetsam up onto the beach out of the deeps. Most was trash—bottles and cans and bags, and Maglor gathered as much of it as he could find, stuffing it into one of the trash bags to be dealt with later. The glass he did not put in the trash but instead moved to a miniature cove near to the path that led up to his cottage, where tide pools formed and where he could leave the jagged broken bottles to be washed by the waves and rubbed smooth by each other and the rocks to become round and smooth bits of sea glass. It took years, but he already had a lovely collection in a series of jars that he kept on the windowsill in the music room to catch the light. He had vague ideas of using them in a sculpture or something. Mostly he just liked the way they looked. Then he went back over the beach to find interesting shells and pieces of driftwood.

"You have a whole small building full of that already," Quynh said as she got to her feet to follow him back up the hill.

"Yes, I know." Maglor stacked the new pieces of driftwood outside in the new sunshine to dry. "None of them have spoken to me yet." Quynh squinted at him, evidently unsure whether he meant it literally or not. Maglor offered her a smile, and turned away to try to coax Norindo inside. It almost worked, until something in the garden caught his attention and he darted off, barking excitedly.

The rest of the afternoon and the evening passed uneventfully. Maglor continued to try to get Quynh interested in reading for its own sake, with limited success, although she seemed happy enough to listen to him read aloud. "Are all of these made-up stories?" she asked as she perused one of his shelves, picking books off of it based on the cover, more than the title.

"Over there, yes," said Maglor. "I have non-fiction on the other bookshelf, though I don't suppose you'll be terribly interested in biographies of Mozart, or books on art history. Some of them are a bit dense."

"Yusuf would," Quynh murmured. She pulled a book down, seemingly at random and frowned at the cover. "Shakespeare? But he didn't write books, he wrote plays."

"And a fair amount of poetry," Maglor said. "You're holding a collection of his sonnets. Though mostly people nowadays know him as one of the most famous English playwrights of all time. I just recently saw a production of As You Like It in London." He paused. "Did you… _know_ William Shakespeare?"

Quynh snorted. "No. We went to a few performances by the Lord Chamberlain's Men—the funny ones." She glanced up at Maglor, eyebrow arched. "Did _you?_ "

He grinned. "We met once when I passed through Stratford-upon-Avon, and had a lovely chat about poetry. That was still early in his career. I did see many of his troupe's performances at the Globe, before I departed for the Americas."

"We may have been there at the same time," Quynh said.

"The world is, at times, very small," said Maglor. He watched Quynh replace the book of sonnets and peruse the rest of the shelf. "Have you dreamed of your old companions?" he asked after a few moments. The idea that they all dreamed of one another when apart was more than a little intriguing to him.

"We only dream of each other until we meet the first time," Quynh said. "But…there are two new ones. One is a man and the other a young girl—very young, very new. The man, Booker, is in Paris. The girl is Nile…she is with Andromache. But I cannot tell where."

"Do you suppose they are also dreaming of you?" Maglor asked. Quynh nodded. "So either you go to them or wait for them to come here. This Booker does not sound terribly hard to find—what's he doing in Paris?"

Quynh pulled down a book as she wrinkled her nose. "Drinking, mostly." She put the book back and took down another. "I don't know this word. Hobbit?"

"That's an enjoyable tale," said Maglor.

"But what is a hobbit?" Quynh asked as she brought the book over to him.

"Listen and find out," he said as he opened the book, thinking of the much older copy tucked away safe in a chest, wrapped up carefully in cloth and in spells of preservation, written in letters and language now forgotten by all but a handful of the Quendi who still walked in the world.

Quynh was, in spite of herself, delighted by the story. They were up most of the night because she insisted that Maglor finish reading it. And then the next morning she was humming the _tra la la lally_ song. Maglor knew many more verses to it, of course, and he taught them to her as they sat in the sunshine in the garden with their breakfast. Afterward, Maglor said, "I need to go down into the village today to pick up a few things. Would you like to come?"

It was a bright day, cloudless after yesterday's storm, which seemed to have washed the world clean and left it fresh and fragrant, all the colors just a little brighter than before. The villagers were all out and about, many of them preparing for the upcoming Midsummer celebrations. Coming out of the little shop with their arms full of groceries, Maglor and Quynh were intercepted by the librarian, Mrs. Adams, who greeted them with a beaming smile and eagerly introduced herself to Quynh, before turning to Maglor to tell him about an auction that was going to be held to raise money for some local youth programs, the details of which escaped Maglor. "…and I know you dabble a bit in sculpture, isn't that right? So I thought I'd give you a pamphlet—here, I'll just tuck it in this back, shall I? And if you have any bits or bobs lying around that you'd be willing to donate to the cause, do let me know. You can bring anything down to the library. And of course I hope you'll come down to the fete! There's going to be a pie contest and live music—young Ted Livingston is really very talented on the saxophone—and games and—oh, and a raffle!"

"Thank you, Mrs. Adams," Maglor said, seizing a moment when she paused for breath. "I'll certainly see if I have anything suitable for the auction."

Mrs. Adams beamed at him and thanked him profusely, and then as Maglor managed to extricate himself and Quynh from the conversation she added, "Oh! An acquaintance of yours is in town, at the Livingstons' bed and breakfast. Dora said he was asking about you and the cottage at breakfast this morning."

"Oh," Maglor said. "Thank you for letting me know, Mrs. Adams." He wasn't quite sure how to ask for more details about this supposed acquaintance—especially since Mrs. Adams clearly had the information second hand—so he could only watch her bustle off down the lane to find more people to recruit into helping with some aspect of the fete.

"Were you expecting someone?" Quynh asked, peering up at his face.

"No."

"Do you have many…acquaintances?" she asked as they set off up the hill back to Maglor's cottage.

"Yes, of course. But if you mean do I have any that would drop in unexpectedly—well, I can think of only one. And he would not bother to stay a night at the local bed and breakfast to fish for gossip about me before hand."

Quynh's eyes narrowed a bit. "Is he another like you?" she asked.

"Mm. Yes."

"How many of you are there?"

"Very few, and growing fewer by the century. Ours were the Elder Days, and they ended long ago."

"Are you going to tell me _what_ you are?" Quynh asked.

Maglor laughed. "I told you last night, and this morning! Don't you remember? The book spoke of the Light-elves and the Deep-elves and the Sea-elves that crossed the Sea to Faerie in the West, before some came back into the Wide World? Those were the Deep-elves, who came back to fight a war that we might even have won, if we were not so foolish and prideful. How do you think I was able to teach you all those other verses of _tra la la lally?_ It was always a silly and ridiculous song, but there was great power in such things, once upon a time. Its purpose was not only to make fun of visiting dwarves."

"But that was only a story!" Quynh protested.

"Yes," said Maglor, "it was a story—and it just so happened also to be a bit of history, so long forgotten that nowadays people read _The Hobbit_ or _The Lord of the Rings_ and believe it only made-up."

"So…you are an elf," said Quynh.

"Yes." By this time they had made it into the kitchen, and Maglor was busy putting things into the fridge.

"One of the Deep-elves. What does that mean?"

"One could say it refers to the depths of our knowledge—we were always eager to learn all there was to learn. It could also be that we were always fond of digging into the earth to find gems and ores, for we were craftspeople, for the most part." He shut the fridge and frowned at the magnets on its doors. "We still are, I should say. I am the last of the Noldor remaining in the Wide World, as _The Hobbit_ puts it, but the rest dwell safely back across the Sea in Faerie, going on making and learning and no doubt squabbling among themselves."

Quynh raked her fingers through her short hair, leaving it standing on end in unruly tufts. "I did not understand half of what you just said. Are you going to explain more plainly?"

"I don't know how," Maglor admitted, laughing, feeling a little helpless. "I've never had to explain it before to someone who didn't already at least partially understand."

"Well, why are you the only Deep-elf left?" Quynh asked. "Why didn't you go back to Faerie with all the others?"

Maglor shook his head and turned away from the silly cartoon dog magnet he had been staring at without really seeing. His hand twinged. "Some Exiles are not permitted ever to return home," he said. "If you want to read about it, I have a copy of the _Quenta Silmarillion_ somewhere." Quynh made a frustrated noise. "It doesn't really matter." This made her snort, clearly disbelieving. "I was thinking of lasagna for—" Maglor cut off at the sound of a knock on his front door. Quynh went very still.

It was probably only Daeron, Maglor told himself as he made his way to answer the door. Only if it was just Daeron why did he feel so nervous? There was a knot in the pit of his stomach and the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, his instincts all screaming that it was not Daeron come bearing a bottle of wine and a notebook full of musical notations he wanted another opinion on. But he could not imagine _why_.

It was not Daeron at the door. Instead it was a mortal man, with dark skin and close-cropped dark hair, dressed in neat slacks and a button down shirt and sensible shoes. His smile was probably meant to be disarming. "Can I help you?" Maglor asked. He heard Quynh moving about behind him, and could only hope that she hadn't armed herself.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Smithson," said the man. He held out a hand. "My name's Copley. I think we need to talk."


	3. Chapter 3

Maglor did not accept the offered hand. "I'm not interested in making any purchases at this time, and I am quite content with my religion, thanks very much," he said, and began to close the door.

"I'm not here to sell you anything, Mr. Smithson," said Mr. Copley, dropping his hand, and placing both inside the pockets of his jacket.

"Then why are you here?" Maglor asked him.

"To talk about immortality."

Movement behind Maglor told him that Quynh was nearby and listening in, and a glance over his shoulder showed him that she was standing poised on the balls of her feet, ready for fight or flight—most likely fight, he thought. He shot her a warning look before turning back to Copley. "I'm not interested in that, either," he said.

"I mean yours," Copley said. "You have very distinctive features, Mr. Smithson." From one of his pockets, he pulled a small handful of photographs, which he held out. Maglor took them automatically. The first was a photo of a bust, Roman—it was his own face, of course, though the nose had a chip in the bridge and the rest of the statue was missing. It had once stood in the courtyard of a villa in Pompeii. Maglor had thought it destroyed with the rest of the city. He looked at the other photographs. One was an old black and white photo of a symphony orchestra in which his figure had been circled, though little of his face was visible in the back row. The next was an image of a painting, which he had never seen before but which did, indeed, show his face, although it was not attached to any sort of figure that he would have willingly posed for, or that even really resembled his own body. He could not remember ever meeting Raphael properly, but he'd seen him at a distance—and it seemed that Raphael had seen him, too. The last photograph was a still from a security camera, and he recognized both himself and Quynh leaving the ice cream shop in Dover.

The old images were one thing—he could explain them away if he had to, for historical doppelgängers were not uncommon. But the most recent image was more disturbing. "How long have you been following me?" he asked Copley, looking up at him with a frown.

"I've been aware of you for some time," Copley said, not at all apologetic. "But I am not the only one who's good at finding patterns—which is why I am here. May I come in?"

"What do you mean, you aren't the only one?" Maglor demanded, making no move to open the door wider. He shoved the photos back at Copley, who fumbled with them before returning them to their pocket.

"There is a private security company, Turralba, based in America that has similar interests to Merrick Pharmaceutical Industries." Copley paused, as though expecting Maglor to know what those interests were, or even to recognize the name of Merrick. When he did not reply Copley went on, "There is a team on its way as we speak to abduct you and take you back to their headquarters in America. They landed in Heathrow this morning." There were many curses in the tongues of Men and Elves that ran through Maglor's head as he stared at Copley. There was little use in denying the accusations of immortality now; whether or not Copley believed him meant nothing, if there were people coming to try to take him.

"And where do you come into it?" he asked at last.

"I'm…associated…with a small group of people like you. Immortals. They're soldiers—they do good work—"

"Are you here to recruit me?"

"I'm here to offer you protection. There is a safe house—"

"I don't need your safe houses." Maglor shifted his weight and looked Copley in the eyes. He was not as skilled at perceiving the minds of others as had been his cousin Galadriel, but he was good enough to be able to sift through Copley's unsuspecting thoughts. The man had not always been so keen on protecting immortals from those who would exploit them. Maglor wondered if his pivot from trying to capture to trying to protect the immortals he had mentioned—who must be Quynh's old companions—was the action of a man seeing the wind changing and adjusting his actions accordingly, or if it was borne of genuine regret. He had at least some regret, though it was buried deep in the way such things were by those skilled at compartmentalization. Maglor himself, once upon a time, had been very good at it.

The important thing, though, was that Copley wasn't lying—not about his current intentions, or about the others coming from America to snatch Maglor up.

As Maglor withdrew from his mind Copley blinked a few times, having felt the intrusion, but unable to recognize it for what it was. "What about your own friends?" Maglor asked him. "Where are they?"

"They are also on their way to England," Copley said, "but on a different mission. They're flying in from São Paulo."

"Nile has been dreaming, too," Quynh said in a low voice, behind Maglor.

Maglor left the doorway, leaving the door open for Copley to come or go as he wished. "I think perhaps we are _not_ going to have lasagna tonight," he told Quynh.

"We are leaving?" she asked.

"It seems so. But not yet." Maglor went to the bedroom and pulled out a few bags. One was empty, and he handed it to Quynh, who had trailed after him. Another empty one he tossed onto the bed; the third was something Copley might recognize, or anyone who had seen a film about spies. It was filled with cash in multiple currencies, and various identities, mostly old or expired, that Maglor hadn't gotten around to disposing of yet. But best not leave it for this Turralba to find. He threw clothes into the other bag, and carefully packed his driftwood harp away into its case—it was the only instrument he could not easily replace, and he would hate to lose it or see it damaged. Carefully also he drew his ancient copy of the Red Book from its chest, and murmured a few extra words of protection over it as he tucked it in among his socks and t-shirts. The bags and the harp went into his car.

It took less time than he had expected. Now it was time to wait, and to consider that perhaps there was time for dinner after all. Copley was incredulous. "You did hear me say they'd be here _tonight_ , didn't you?" he asked.

"I did," said Maglor, as he rummaged in a cabinet. He needed something stronger than tea. "But I have questions you cannot answer, Mr. Copley. You're welcome to stay, of course, but when night falls you must do as I say." He glanced up at Quynh. "You as well."

"Are you going to fight them?" she asked, eyes glittering.

"No." Maglor straightened with a bottle of brandy. "There will be no blood shed in this house." He met her gaze as he said it, and after a moment she nodded, though clearly reluctant.

"These men are ex-Special Forces," Copley pointed out. He leaned on the door frame, arms crossed, frowning. "Navy SEALs, Green Berets—you understand what that means?"

"I would expect no less," Maglor replied. He poured three small glasses of brandy, leaving two for Quynh and Copley to take if they wished—Quynh took hers and sniffed at it curiously—and put the bottle away. "Do you doubt that I, also, am highly trained?"

"Honestly?" Copley's eyebrow rose. "There's nothing in your file to suggest that you are."

Maglor laughed. "Child, your files could never stretch back far enough to see the whole of me." He knocked back the last of his brandy and went to the music room, where he drowned out any other questions or protestations from either guest with the loudest piano concerto he could recall at a moment's notice. It was tempting to curse the morning that washed Quynh onto the shore in his path—but that was not fair. The Americans seeking immortality or magic or whatever it was they thought to find in him would have come whether Quynh had been there or not. But her old friends were coming, too, and Maglor did not know if he would find in them allies or obstacles. He supposed it depended on what they expected of him.

When the concerto was ended, silence fell over the small house. Quynh was staring out of a window, chewing her thumbnail absently. Copley was browsing Maglor's bookshelves, a picture of casual curiosity that hid whatever analysis of Maglor was going on in his head. Maglor ignored them both, staring at the piano keys and feeling oddly out of breath, as though he had just run a long distance.

A scratching at the door had Copley reaching for a gun and Quynh tensing for a fight, but Maglor recognized the sound. "Ai, I nearly forgot Norindo." He rose and went to the door. The little dog sat on the porch, tail thumping the boards as he grinned up at Maglor, tongue lolling. "Hello, little friend," Maglor said, crouching to give him a good scratch behind the ears. "Are you at last going to come inside, hm?"

The answer, alas, was no. Norindo tugged at the hem of Maglor's jeans and then darted off down the footpath, stopping at the gate and looking back expectantly. "Ah, I see," Maglor said. He looked at the sky. The sun was still high. Hours stretched before him, before his would-be kidnappers came. He sighed, and left Quynh and Copley to their own thoughts and walked with Norindo to the top of the path that led down to the beach. There was a figure lolling in the waves, practically one of the waves himself—and to anyone else that is how he would have appeared. "Ah," Maglor said again, with a sigh, looking down at Norindo, who was again tugging at his jeans. "Even you are more than you seem, aren't you?"

First Uinen, now Ossë. Maglor wondered what message the storm-lord had for him. But better find out now. He glanced over his shoulder once more at the cottage, and then followed Norindo down the path. Norindo ran ahead, barking joyfully and kicking up sand as he went, heedless of the waves and Ossë now that his errand was accomplished. Maglor went more slowly, pausing to pick up a shell here and there, and skirting the waves and wet, until he drew even with Ossë, who rose up to a man's height. He took a more solidly human-seeming shape than his lady wife, though his hair remained flowing and white with foam. "Hail, Macalaurë Canafinwë!" he said, his grin wide and pearly.

"Ossë," Maglor replied, putting his hands into his pockets. "I spoke with your lady wife only recently. To what do I owe the honor of two Maiar coming to me like this?"

"Uinen's errands are her own," Ossë said, waving a hand. A wave leaped up out of the water, splashing Maglor up to the knee. He sighed. "But she brought back to Eldamar word of you, and caused something of a stir among your kindred. So it was that Master Elrond sought me out where I was sojourning along the southern coasts of Valinor, where the waves crash against the jagged rocks with delightful music, and he asked me to bear a message to you, for I am one of very few who still cross the Straight Road to and from the West."

Maglor felt like someone had punched him square in the chest, driving all the air out of his lungs. He gaped, and then, when he found his tongue again, he said, faintly, "Elrond sent you?"

"Are you surprised, son of Fëanáro?"

He was. Of course he was. "What is the message?" he asked.

"A plea. Come home, says Elrond. And says Nerdanel, and Fëanáro and Maitimo and all of your other brothers, and—"

"Says _Fëanáro?_ " Maglor's voice broke on the name. "But I thought—"

"You have been away a very long time," said Ossë, and his voice was surprisingly gentle, like the smallest wash of a wave up soft sand, to cool one's toes. "Much has changed, in these hither lands, and in the West also. Fëanáro walks with his brothers under the sun, and with his wife and his sons—all but one. Master Elrond has charged me to remind you that the Ban on the Exiles was lifted long ago, after the War of the Ring, and that you have been free to return ever since."

Maglor supposed he had known this—that some part of him had known it, at least—but it felt as though he were learning it for the first time. He could find a small boat and sail away right then, heading west, and instead of the Americas he would find instead the Straight Road beyond the stars… He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. "Thank you," he said finally, opening his eyes. Ossë was watching him, his eyes, like Uinen's, keen as stars. "Please, tell Elrond…when you next see him…I will come. But not yet. I have business here that needs finishing."

Ossë's smile was sudden and bright. "I will tell him!" he said. "And when you choose to set forth, Macalaurë son of Fëanáro, you will find steady winds and fair seas!" He tossed something to Maglor, who caught it reflexively, and then melted back into the surf much as Uinen had on that morning that seemed somehow so long ago and yet just yesterday. Maglor looked down at his palm, and found a white gem set in silver, with a small loop for a chain. It gleamed like a star in his hand, emitting its own light. The work was painfully familiar—it was the work of his father, down to the way the light had been caught in the gem, and the delicate, tiny lettering along the silver setting that spelled out his name. There was virtue in the gem; it felt warm in his hand, a comforting warmth like a hearth side on a cold day, or a mug of tea on a rainy morning. He had not held an Elven-work in his hands that was not his own in more years than he could count, least of all a work of his father, and the mere sight of it made him want to weep with some unnamed emotion that was not joy or sadness, and was yet both and more. He pressed a kiss to the gem and turned to walk back up the hill. Norindo followed, and this time he trotted into the house after Maglor.

Quynh and Copley both looked at him in some confusion as he passed by, though neither remarked on the state of his jeans or the look on his face. Norindo trotted over to give Copley a good sniff before greeting Quynh with a lick to her hand and a roll onto his belly for scratches. Maglor left them to change into dry pants, and to find a chain for the gem. He slipped it over his head and tucked it beneath his shirt, against his skin, where it remained a warm and comforting presence.

In the end he did make the lasagna for dinner—they had the time, and it would be a shame to waste the ingredients he'd bought for the purpose. And it kept his mind and hands busy, at least until it was in the oven and he had nothing but the washing up to do afterward, which required no thought, and so his mind strayed to the West, conjuring images of a childhood so far in the past he'd nearly forgotten, in a white city shining on a hill filled with the sound of laughter and singing. To think that he might see it again…

Night fell. Clouds gathered, obscuring the stars. Maglor stood on his porch and listened to the waves on the shore, and to the wind in the grass. He then went to the garden and dug up a small athelas plant that had taken root near the larger one. He did not know when he would be able to return to this cottage, and the thought was melancholy. But even if he ever could, it would not be for long—only to tidy up in preparation for his final departure. And where he would go in the meantime, and for how long…that remained to be seen. It depended a great deal on what he might learn that night.

Once he had the small plant in a small pot nestled in the cup holder of his car, he returned to the house where Copley and Quynh were waiting, both of them growing impatient, though Copley was better at hiding it than Quynh. Norindo, on the other hand, was stretched out on the floor, fast asleep and twitching occasionally as he chased rabbits and squirrels through his dreams.

"What exactly are you planning to do tonight?" Copley asked.

"And what are _we_ going to do?" Quynh added.

"The two of you will wait in the attic," Maglor said.

"You don't have an attic," Quynh said, narrowing her eyes at him.

He smiled. "Yes, I do. Come." He led them down the hall; the cottage was only one floor, except for a small attic that would only barely be big enough for two people to sit comfortably. It was accessed by a trap door that pulled down into a short ladder. Around the edges of it Maglor had placed very small runes, so that even someone like Quynh making a thorough search of the place would miss it, unless shown; he'd thought to keep valuables up there, once upon a time, but in the end there was little he had that he needed to hide. "Here. They will search the house but if you could not find this door, Quynh, then they will not either."

"How did you hide it?" she demanded.

He ignored the question. "The two of you—and Norindo, I will lift him up to you—must stay up there, and as silent as you can. Do not come down until I come for you." He met each of their gazes. Both of them were confused, of course, but it would take too long to explain—and he doubted Copley, at least, would accept the explanation. "Do I have your word?"

After a short hesitation, Quynh huffed a sigh. "Fine. But where will _you_ be hiding?"

"Anywhere there is a shadow deep enough," Maglor replied. "Mr. Copley. Do I have your word that you will remain up there and silent until I come for you?"

Copley sighed, and held up his hands. "All right. I'm of the least use in a fight, I know."

The two retreated to the attic without anymore argument, and Norindo was lifted up with them. Maglor carried him up the ladder, and the little dog licked his face before curling up against Quynh's leg and, to all appearances, going straight back to sleep. "Stay quiet," Maglor said.

"What if you need help?" Quynh asked.

"I won't."

Maglor made something of a show in going about an evening routine, making tea and taking a few sips before leaving it to cool on the table. He washed the counters and swept the floors and tidied up some of the clutter. Then he turned on some music, soft piano music, and extinguished all the lights, leaving the house in darkness as though he had gone to bed as usual. He did not go to the bedroom, instead slipping into a dark corner, a driftwood-carved flute in his hands, and waited.

It was another few hours before, beneath the quiet music, he heard the crunch of boots on gravel outside, followed by boots treading carefully on his wooden porch, and then the quiet opening of the front door—and then the back door a moment later. Six men entered the house, guns drawn, wearing night-vision goggles. Even with that advantage they did not see Maglor, where he had wrapped the shadows around him. As they searched he brought the flute to his lips and began to play, and as he played he moved, slipping from corner to corner, shadow to shadow. Some spotted him out of the corner of their eye but when they turned he was gone, and the longer he played, the heavier their footsteps became, and the clumsier they grew. They fought the enchantment, of course, and one or two could very nearly throw it off entirely—and wasn't that interesting—but in the end all but one succumbed entirely, crumpling quietly into soft heaps on the floor. The last man stood in the hallway with his hands pressed over his ears and his jaw clenched against a yawn, fighting it harder than Maglor had ever seen anyone resist such a spell.

He stopped playing and stepped out of the shadows. The man dropped his hands and pulled out his gun. "Don't make another sound," he barked. "Don't move."

"Or you'll shoot me?" Maglor asked lightly. "And what happens when you miss? Or if you kill me? I'm sure your masters wouldn't like that."

"Get on your knees and put your hands in the air," the man ordered. His voice was rough, but hard as steel.

"No. I do not take orders from house-breakers and kidnappers."

"You're one yourself, aren't you?" the man asked, and this made Maglor pause. What _did_ they know about him? "You did worse things than kidnap, too, if all the stories in those old books are true."

Maglor met his gaze and for the second time that day he delved into the mind of another. But this man had been prepared for it, and it was much harder to see what he knew or thought than it had been with Copley. That alone was alarming. Even more alarming was the single image of true importance that Maglor managed to glean—so unexpected that it nearly sent him reeling. He retreated from the man's mind, a headache building behind his eyes, taking a step backward as he did so. The man pressed his advantage and took aim with his pistol. The shot went side, but just barely. Maglor ducked, and the man lunged, sending them both crashing to the ground. The breath was driven momentarily from Maglor's lungs, but this moment was all the man needed to get in a blow to his face. He felt something crack in the bridge of his nose, and the taste of blood flooded his mouth and poured down the back of his throat.

But even out of practice, Maglor was faster and stronger. He twisted and used his legs as leverage and flipped the two of them so the man was the one on the floor, Maglor's blood dripping onto his face. Maglor spoke a word and the man's grip on his arm went slack—but just for a moment. He spoke another word, and then a third, and the enchantments that lay over all the house rose up to claim this last man, though he took another swing at the last, knocking Maglor back with a blow to the jaw, before his muscles went slack and his eyes rolled up and shut.

It was very quiet. Maglor sat up, and dabbed at the blood running down his chin, wincing. He retreated to the kitchen to wash up and find something to staunch the bleeding before returning to search the men's pockets. None carried a cell phone, and the leader had only a small notebook filled with chicken-scratch notes that revealed little except an apparently long-running game of hangman in the margins. He tossed it aside and set about binding the man with the flex-cuffs they had brought on their own belts, before dragging them outside. He took them to a field away from both his cottage and the village, all but the leader. That man he left where he lay in the doorway between the parlor and the kitchen. On one he found a set of keys, and that led him to their van parked well out of the way on the other side of the village. It was simple work to find the spare key beneath the mat and to let the air out of all the tires, before dumping the keys, along with all of their weapons, into the dumpster behind the pub, which was scheduled to be emptied come sunup. He was the only one moving about in the village. His song of sleep had not reached beyond his own house, but his neighbors did not need it. They remained safe and sound asleep in their beds, none the wiser as he slipped through the little streets on silent feet.

Back home, Maglor stood over the last intruder, propped up against the wall but still unconscious, his head lolling forward, and considered whether to rouse Quynh and Copley. In the end he decided against it. If this man's masters did not yet know of Quynh and the others, then he would not be the one to tell them.

He crouched in front of the man and spoke a word. After a moment he stirred, blinking slowly and lifting his head as though with considerable effort. Sleep still clung to him like cobwebs, falling away only slowly. He blinked at Maglor in the darkness, and then tried to lunge at him, only to find his ankles and wrists bound, so all that happened was that he fell over on his side. Maglor sat back on his heels. "It was a fool's errand your masters sent you on, this night," he said, and saw the man's eyes widen, white around the edges in the gloom, for now he could see Maglor as he truly was, with the light of Telperion and Laurelin blazing in his eyes. "You say you knew the tales of what I did, in the early morning of the world." Maglor leaned forward, and the man tried to back away, but he was up against the wall and could not move. "I say you know nothing of the power of the Elves."

The man swallowed hard, and rallied—Maglor had to give him credit for that. "We've got one of you already, and he didn't put up any fight at all," he said, though his voice trembled.

"Doubtless you caught him unawares," Maglor said. "Or else he would not have been so kind as I have been." He grabbed the edge of the man's vest and drew him close; he could smell the sour sweat of him, and feel him tremble beneath his hand. "Now tell me truly and tell me quickly, lest I forget to be merciful—where are you holding Daeron?"


	4. Chapter 4

Once all of the intruders were asleep and tied up, and he had all the answers he was going to get, Maglor went to wake Copley and Quynh. Things would go faster if there were three of them dragging unconscious bodies through the weeds, instead of just one. It took a few tries—the enchantment had caught them up and held them fast, for they had not been forewarned. Copley woke slowly; Quynh woke with a start and a gasp, like she was desperate for air. She scrambled down the ladder after Maglor, and he suspected she might have run all the way outside to the nearest field, but she stopped short when he flipped the hall light on. "What happened to no blood?" she demanded.

"Things did not go quite as planned," Maglor replied. He sounded as though he had a bad cold, he thought as Copley descended more slowly, and Norindo appeared at the opening to whine until Copley carefully scooped him up under an arm. It was something of a miracle that he'd managed to appear as threatening to the intruder as he had. "I'll be fine. I just need help moving them before we leave."

Copley looked around sharply. "Did you kill them _all?_ " he asked, incredulous.

"Of course not! I sang them to sleep—and you as well, I'm afraid. I'm sorry." This he added to Quynh, who was trembling and pale. "You dreamed of the sea, didn't you?"

"How did you know?" Copley asked, even more incredulous if that were possible. Quynh only nodded.

"I've spent so many years beside the sea that its music has wound itself into my own in ways I can no longer quite control," Maglor said, ignoring Copley. "I didn't mean to distress you."

She hesitated, and then nodded. "Where are the bodies?" she asked.

"They're alive," Maglor said, "and they're in the living room." At his direction, the three of them dragged the men out, none-too-gently, into a field not far from his house but a decent distance from the village, and where there were no popular walking paths, so no one would stumble on the men by accident come morning. Maglor gave Copley the keys he'd taken off the leader, and Copley disappeared into the sleeping village, returning some twenty minutes later to report that the van they'd come in had been disabled and the keys disposed of. They would have quite a task before them just to leave the area, let alone follow Maglor.

"Now what?" Copley asked Maglor, once they were back inside. "Do you need a doctor…?"

"No." Maglor had washed his face more thoroughly and taken stock of the damage. It looked—and felt—worse than it was. It would heal before very long. "Are you going to insist on coming along, or will we part ways now?" he asked, though he didn't wait for an answer before going to find his own car keys.

"I don't know," Copley said, trailing along behind. "You know they're probably going to try again…?"

"Not if they can't find me," said Maglor.

"Where are you going to go?"

Maglor found his keys were he usually kept them, and eyed Norindo, wondering if he would be willing to get into the car. Norindo looked back at him, and then scratched himself behind an ear. Well, if he ran off when the door opened, there wasn't really anything to be done about it except hope that he would find someone else willing to put out food. To Copley he said, "I'm not sure I can describe it to you—not how to get there. It cannot be found unless you already know where it is, or are particularly keen-eyed—and few nowadays are." Copley frowned and opened his mouth to protest, but Maglor was already headed out the door. "You need to decide now, Mr. Copley, if you are coming or if we are parting."

"If I don't come I feel like I'm going to lose track of you entirely," Copley said. "And even if you don't think that's a bad thing—"

The next few seconds passed both very quickly and very slowly. Maglor opened the front door, and Norindo darted outside between his legs, and for the first time since Maglor had known him was growling. He opened his mouth to call Norindo back, but at that moment a sharp pinprick of pain blossomed just where his neck met his shoulder. Copley appeared at his side with his gun raised, as Maglor lifted his hand to find a dart sticking out of his skin. As he plucked it out he could feel the drug speeding its way through his veins, as his vision started to darken at the edges. Only vaguely was he aware of a figure darting away into the darkness, and of Quynh shouting something—and then there was nothing.

.

He woke with a start on an unfamiliar sofa in an unfamiliar room, to golden afternoon sunlight slanting in through the gaps in the blinds. Norindo lay sprawled across his chest, a comforting weight. His mouth tasted like blood and also of the disgusting dry-mouth aftertaste he usually associated with hangovers. Only he hadn't had a hangover in decades, not since he'd made the mistake of spending a year in New York in 1925 with Daeron, who knew all the best speakeasies, where they paid for their drinks with music.

Daeron. Maglor had closed his eyes again, but now he opened them and tried to sit up. Norindo squirmed around and whined, but jumped to the floor. Maglor took quick stock of the room. It was comfortable and nicely decorated, but not at all homey—it had the slightly stale air of a place only rarely lived in. There was a thin film of dust over the art frames on the walls, though fresh tracks on the carpet suggested that Maglor had slept through a vacuuming. Just as he had the thought he spotted a little robot cleaner trundle along the hallway just beyond the door. Norindo watched it with his head cocked slightly to the side.

This must be Copley's safe house. Maglor gritted his teeth and got to his feet, staggering a little as he crossed the room. It was not hard to find the kitchen, which was empty but for a half-full coffee pot, still slightly warm. Maglor opened the cupboards and the fridge, not really expecting to find much and finding exactly that—only a handful of non-perishables in the cupboards, and nothing at all in the fridge. Someone had placed his small athelas plant on the window. He found a proper kettle and put it on the stove; there was no tea but he could feel the muscles in his neck and shoulders, like harp strings wound too tightly.

"You're awake." Quynh had appeared behind him soundlessly, and Maglor started. "Sorry."

"How long was I asleep?" he asked, and grimaced as his voice sounded both raspy and stuffed up. His whole face hurt.

"Nearly all day," she replied. "Copley went out to get food."

"Where are we?"

"Canterbury." Quynh glanced out of the window at the small back garden, neatly fenced in, sparse but well-tended. Nearly the opposite of Maglor's own cottage garden. "It's very different from what I remember."

"Mm." Maglor filled a glass with cold water and drank it down. His hands trembled only very slightly. "Did you catch whoever it was that shot the dart?"

"No. Copley wasn't sure who it was. It didn't make much sense to be a member of the same group, or something. I thought they'd poisoned you."

Maglor hummed again. Then he asked, "Is my harp still in the car?"

"No. It's near the front door. Copley didn't want to drive around with it. I think he thinks bringing it at all was stupid."

"I don't particularly care what Copley thinks," said Maglor. "We can't all be spies. I made that harp with my own hands. Where I go it goes." He refilled the glass, but only sipped it. The kettle was nearly ready to sing. He plucked a leaf from the athelas plant and bruised it in his palm as he searched for a bowl. In moments the fresh smell of wind on grass filled the small kitchen, managing to filter through even Maglor's broken and stuffed-up nose. He leaned against the table and sighed, closing his eyes for a moment.

He opened them at the sound of the front door opening. Copley appeared a moment later with his arms full of grocery bags. "Oh, good," he said, "you're awake. I was starting to worry we'd have to find a doctor."

"I suppose this is the safe house you wanted to bring me to in the first place," Maglor said.

"It is."

"Well, thank you."

"Don't thank me yet. I haven't had time to discover who else figured out who—or what—you are."

"You don't think that last person was from—what did you call it, Turralba?"

"None of the others had darts or drugs on them," said Copley as he set the bags on the table. He looked at the bowl. "What's that?"

"Kingsfoil. But surely it can't be coincidence that another party arrived on the same evening."

"No. That's why I need to do some digging. And speaking of finding you, I took the battery out of your phone."

That was probably for the best. "Does this house have a land line?" he asked.

"You need to make some calls?" Copley's eyebrow arched.

"As a matter of fact, I do. I am not the only Elf still dwelling on these shores—and one other has already been caught. I need to warn the others that I know, so they can spread the word among our people. Oh, don't look at me like that," he added. "It was what your people would call elvish magic that you experienced last night—that kept those men deep in slumber as we dragged them through the dirt and grass of the fields, that put you to sleep in the attic, unless you believe you would have dozed off otherwise. If immortality that brings a mortal man or woman back from death in a few moments, and heals wounds in even less time is not so hard to believe in, why not Elves?"

Copley opened his mouth to reply, perhaps to argue, but was interrupted by his own cell phone ringing. "Excuse me," he said, setting down a small bag of tomatoes as he fished it out of his pocket. "Hello, Nile," he said, and broke off as rapid speech came through on the other end, tinny and too faint for the words to be made out. Maglor thought the voice sounded distressed. "I—yes, there's a woman with me named Quynh," Copley said after a moment, "but I don't—no?—no, she's not— _I'm_ fine, of course—"

Quynh looked up from her inspection of a package of microwave popcorn. Her mouth quirked wryly. "They're afraid of me," she murmured, for Maglor's ears only.

He frowned at her. "Should they be?"

"Maybe." She set the package down. "I am still angry with Andromache."

"For what? It was not her fault, what happened to you." Quynh looked away. "I cannot believe that they did not find you for lack of trying."

"Such things are easy for you to say," she said. "And you don't need to worry about the carpets. They aren't yours to clean up."

Copley finished his conversation after giving Nile an address, presumably theirs. He looked at Quynh thoughtfully for a moment, before he said, "You should know before they arrive that Andy—Andromache—isn't immortal anymore."

" _What?_ " Quynh looked up. "But—"

"She lost it about six months ago."

Quynh's shock turned into a scowl, and she turned and left the room without another word. Maglor watched her go, and then looked at Copley. "When will they be here?" he asked.

"About two hours. They just landed in London, and evidently no one thought to reserve a rental car." Copley sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He looked suddenly very weary. "This is not how I thought any of this was going to go. Did you know who Quynh was?"

"Yes. I found her washed up on the beach a few days ago—she was dead, and then suddenly she wasn't. It was rather a shock."

"And you—you aren't actually one of them. You're something else."

"I am what you would call an Elf," Maglor said. "My people do not grow old and die as Men do, and in some ways we are hardier. But I can be slain—and I won't get back up again afterward. But don't worry about Quynh. I don't think she bears any real ill will toward Andromache or the others—but how can she not be troubled, after so many centuries of suffering at the bottom of the sea?"

"Troubled is one word for it," Copley said. "Nile thinks she's completely insane."

"I would not say so. The kingsfoil helps to sooth distress minds and spirits." Maglor rubbed at one of the leaves on the plant as it sat on the windowsill. "Did you say whether this house has a phone?"

"Yeah, it does." Copley retrieved a cordless phone from a charging port. "I'll be in the garden with my laptop if you need me—oh, and I took your things up to the first bedroom on the left at the top of the stairs."

"Thank you."

Maglor retrieved his harp from the front hall and took it back to the little living room where he'd woken up. Norindo had returned to the sofa and was curled up fast asleep. Before he set it up, however, he sat down and dialed a number on the phone. It rang for so long that he feared it would not even go to voice mail, but then a woman answered with a pleasant, musical voice, in French. "Yes, hello?" In the background Maglor could hear voices and traffic, and someone playing a guitar very badly.

"Linnoriel?" Maglor asked.

She switched immediately to Sindarin. "Who is this?"

"Maglor." He waited for the call to drop, but though the silence between them stretched uncomfortably, she did not hang up.

"I didn't realize you had this number," she said finally. The background noises changed, growing fainter.

"Your mother gave it to me when I last saw her," Maglor said. "I am glad it still works."

"What do you need?" Linnoriel asked, brisk now that she was over her surprise. "You sound strange."

"A group of men came to my home last night," Maglor told her, "and tried to abduct me. I was warned beforehand, and was ready for them—but they knew who I am." Again the silence stretched between them. He went on after giving the information a moment to sink in. "Word needs to be spread that we are being hunted. Daeron has already been taken."

At this Linnoriel hissed a curse. "My father will want to hear all of this, and more," she said. "Where are you? Can you come to France?"

"I had intended to go to America. That is where they are holding Daeron."

"You are—no. We should not speak of this over the phone. Come to France. My father's court has not moved since you last visited us. We may all take counsel there."

Maglor bit his lip. He hated to delay. But there was little choice—and it wasn't as though he had any definite plans already in place. "All right," he said. "I will come as soon as I can. You can reach me at this number the rest of today."

"Very good," Linnoriel said. "We will await your arrival."

Maglor hung up and stared at the phone for a while, trying to think through logistics, and how to juggle this summons from the last remaining Elven Princess in the world with whatever was going on with Quynh and the others. But soon he gave up and took out his harp. If he couldn't think, he could play, and perhaps the plans would come later. Once he had the blinds raised and the window cracked, so he could feel the sun and the breeze, he sat at his harp and closed his eyes as he put his fingers to the strings. The music that came to him was Daeron's, that famous music for the breaking of the heart that he had piped and sang and strummed in the glades of Neldoreth when the world was young and Doom had not yet pierced the Girdle. He could see it in his mind's eye, the bright young sunshine shining green through the canopy of beech leaves far overhead that rustled gently in the breeze, and the sparkling Esgalduin that gleamed with starlight even at high noon, and echoed the voice of Melian and her nightingales, and the white niphredil flowers like snowdrifts everywhere.

At some point he heard the sound of a car, and then the slamming of car doors, four of them. He opened his eyes to find that several hours had passed. He did not stop his playing, but changed the tune to one of peace and calm that was often played in Lórien—or at least, that had often been played there when he was very young and just learning what music could do. As he did he watched the foursome as they gathered on the sidewalk. They moved in tandem, three of them with the ease and familiarity of long centuries, though also as though something or someone was missing. He wondered if that were Quynh or Booker, who was presumably still getting drunk in Paris. He watched them as they paused; the two men looked up and down the street as though they half-expected some enemy to leap out from behind the neighbor's hydrangea bushes, before they all looked toward the window where he sat. He inclined his head slightly, never faltering in his playing.

He heard Quynh on the stairs as they walked up the short path to the door; Copley came in from the back garden to open it, and Norindo jumped down from the sofa to go sniff at Quynh's foot and jump up to ask fo

r a good scratch behind the ears. Quynh had come into the living room but stood rigid near the coffee table, eyes on the doorway. Her eyes were red, but for the moment dry.

Three of the four crowded into the living room, sparing Maglor not a single glance, and after a few seconds of awkward staring Quynh burst into tears, and then so did one of the men, and then all four of them were jumbled together in a tangle of limbs, with Norindo barking and prancing around their feet. The younger woman, who must be Nile, peered into the room and then retreated toward the kitchen after Copley, who left the house a few minutes later.

At last, emotions began to ebb, and Nile was drawn into the room to be introduced to Quynh. And then Quynh pulled Maglor away from the harp to be introduced in turn. He was a little surprised to be embraced as though he were already one of their own. Nile was pulled into the room a moment later, and for some time the talk was all a jumble of names and introductions. It was a joyful scene, and in seeing them all together, Maglor at last understood at least one small part of why they were the way they were. It was in their eyes, a light that he had not noticed before in Quynh but shone brighter now that she was reunited with her old companions.

The Wise had said long ago that the line of Lúthien would never fail. And here before him was proof, five of her children brought together by some strange fate, in all of them most strongly flowing the blood of Melian. And now that he was seeing her in person, Maglor thought that he _had_ seen Andromache before—at a distance, a very very long time ago in her own youth. He doubted she had seen him, or that she would remember if she had. He'd been curious and a little worried about tales of a young woman who did not die, who was worshiped as a goddess because of it. As far as he could tell at the time, she had only been a very skilled warrior with more than her share of luck.

Copley returned with take out, and they all crowded into the kitchen to eat dinner. Even Norindo had a special meal of his own. Maglor remained quiet throughout the meal, satisfied that now that the initial meeting was over the awkwardness was minimal, as Joe and Nicky took turns telling Quynh some of the more interesting things that she had missed—including Nile's joining them, which had taken place surprisingly recently. It also made some of Copley's remarks about Merrick Pharmaceuticals more clear, and impressed Quynh, and embarrassed Nile herself.

As the meal came to an end, everyone was startled by the house phone ringing. Everyone but Maglor looked at one another in alarm, and before he could rise Joe got up and answered. "Hello?" He listened for a moment, brow furrowing, and then said to the room at large, "Someone wants to talk to…Maglor?"

"That's me," said Maglor as he rose.

"I thought you went by Max these days," Copley remarked.

"Yes, I do." Maglor accepted the phone from Joe, and slipped into Sindarin, since Quynh and Copley knew what he was and it didn't seem worth hiding from the others—it wasn't like they would understand the language anyway. "Linnoriel?"

"No, it's Lumorn." It was Linnoriel's brother, and he sounded breathless and half-panicked. "Yours was the first number when I opened my phone—I cannot speak long. Daeron's home in New York is being watched and now I am being followed, and I fear I do not know the city well enough to lose them. You must tell my father, if I am unable to escape and speak with him myself."

Maglor's blood ran cold. "Try to leave the city," he said, "or to make your way to Central Park. It is not any great wood but there are places enough to hide until you can form a better plan or someone can make their way to you. I will leave for your father's house now—best not call here again."

"Central Park. Yes. I can do that—thank you." Lumorn ended the call. For a moment Maglor stared at the wall, mind racing. If only there were not a whole ocean in the way!

"Max?" Quynh said after a moment.

"I must go." Maglor set the phone down carefully, for his hands were shaking.

"What, now?" Nile said, as Joe asked, "What happened?"

"Hopefully nothing." Maglor took the stairs two at a time and grabbed his bag off the bed, his mind racing. Norindo must be corralled into the car, and his harp packed away—if he was to leave it anywhere it would be with Thranduil's folk, not this unfamiliar house in Canterbury. When he turned he found Quynh in the doorway, scowling at him. "Quynh."

"You can't just go off by yourself," she said. "There are people hunting you."

"Not only me, and that is why I must go. I intended to rest here tonight and leave in the morning, but there is no time now to waste." Maglor hoisted his bag over his shoulder. "And you are again with your own family. I cannot ask you to come with me."

"I'm coming anyway. And they can help. We will all come with you. They're already preparing to leave."

Maglor hesitated. "I go to France," he said. "And the quickest way will be by the channel tunnel. That goes beneath the sea." Quynh's face went ashen, but she did not waver. "And I do not know that you will all be welcome. I go to the court of the last Elvenking remaining in Middle-earth."

"Then you will have to convince him we can help," Quynh said, as though it were that simple.

"I have never been able to convince Thranduil of anything," Maglor said wryly. "I myself am only barely tolerated in his court. But very well; it's not like I can very well stop you." He paused, and then smiled at Quynh, placing a hand on her shoulder; he was pleased in spite of himself that he was not going to be traveling alone. "Thank you. For your stubbornness I name you elf-friend." She grinned.

In the end only Copley stayed behind, and they did not take the tunnel, arriving in Dover in time to catch a ferry. Maglor retreated to the deck once they were underway, letting Quynh explain something of what was going on to the others, and eager to feel the sea wind and spray on his face, though it galled him, a little, for more reasons than one, to be going east instead of west. He stared down over the railing at the water as he fiddled with the chain around his neck. The warmth of the gem against his heart was a comfort, but also a source of homesickness that kept welling up like blood out of a newly-opened wound.

"Are you okay?" Maglor didn't jump at the sound of Nile's voice, but it was a near thing. Careless of him to get so lost in thought, even on a ship out in the middle of the English Channel.

"As much as can be expected." He offered her a smile, which she returned. "Though I'm afraid I am not very good company."

"You're worried about your friend. Friends?"

"Daeron is a friend. I know Lumorn less well."

Nile leaned on the railing, peering over into the water. "So," she said, "Quynh was talking about _The Hobbit_ like it's a history book. Nicky's trying very gently to explain the concept of modern fantasy fiction, but I can't tell if she's really not getting it or if she's messing with him."

"The history is so ancient it may as well be fantasy, nowadays," Maglor said. "The world has changed a great deal. If there are still Dwarves in the world they have retreated deep into their mountain halls, and if there are hobbits they have grown small and silent indeed." Nile frowned at him. "Are you so surprised? You cannot die, and have been traveling these past months with two soldiers of the Crusades and a woman of ancient Scythia."

"You have to draw the line _somewhere_ ," Nile said. "I feel like if Elves and Dwarves were real Andy at least would've met one, you know? I already asked about vampires."  
"Fortunately for us all, Thuringwethil and her ilk no longer wander the earth."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

"Child, I am too tired to fuck with anyone." Maglor straightened and rolled his neck, sighing as tense muscles loosened. He turned his face to the sky; it was not long past sunset now, and a single bright star shone on the eastern horizon. "Aiya Eärendil, elenion ancalima," he murmured.

Nile looked at him, and then at the star. "That's Venus," she said.

"It is the Star of High Hope," he said. "And I for one am greatly in need of it."


End file.
